KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Dave Pere Growing a Facebook Community

Episode Date: November 21, 2024

Welcome back to another episode of The Agent Goldmine, where today you can expect to learn how to build an online community, specifically what to do with your Facebook group, how to start it, how to keep community engaged, how to hire someone to help assist with your Facebook community, essentially a community manager, what exactly they do, how and where to hire them, as well as where to find and how to hire an assistant to help you run all aspects of your life. This guest does everything from running your calendar to being your DD and tactical tips on how to grow your brand. Dave Perret is the name of our guest today. And he is one of my favorite people, longtime friend of both me and Allie. Dave Perret was a Marine. And he recently got out when he achieved financial freedom. But he's super passionate about real estate, financial freedom, and educating military members specifically. He is the host of the military to millionaire podcast, which fun fact was the very first podcast that I was ever on back in 2017 when Dave was just starting out. And yeah, since then Dave has blown up on the internet,

on both YouTube and on his Instagram. And he founded the war room, which is a nationwide community for military members. He's also a real estate agent. and last year made over $130,000 on referrals alone. And on the real estate investor side of the house, he owns over 100 units in his personal portfolio and is an investor in several other deals, achieved financial freedom back in 2021, transition from active duty into the Marine Corps reserves

and now devotes every minute of his time to helping military members other than when he's drunk at his property manager's house or office, like Allie was talking about and he's getting his assistant to TV again. But anyway, you'll hear about that. Stick around. We're going to talk about that in the show. And otherwise, gold miners, welcome Dave Paray.

Yeah, agents. Yeah, Agent Goldmine. What is it? I minimized. How long have we been friends? Well, no, I just, no, I know your last name from 2019 in FinCon when you're like, it's like hip, hooray. Oh, God.

And I, that's perfect. Don't tell my mom. mom that I've used that. She will get. I'm going to send her this podcast. I don't think she can get hard, but she would. Okay, Dave, we, thank you so much for coming on the age of all mine. And Allie and I have so many questions. And, but the first one direction we wanted to go was kind of like community and the war room. So what is the war room? There's so many online communities these days. They're like fucking everywhere. And then it's hard to get people to focus on one thing because there's so many distractions and engagement and all the things.

So please, what are you doing with your online community? How are you doing it? Yeah. So essentially my community started as, hey, I want, I have this big group of service members and vets who are trying to buy real estate, invest in, you know, entrepreneurship, businesses, whatever. And my circle is getting hard to tell. So I want to create a community with people that have a little skin in the game.

Let's drop a little bit of cash and, you know, it wasn't much. But I had to have a lot of success in masterminds. And I was like, I'm going to create one for service members where we don't let. If you didn't personally serve, you don't get in the group. Sorry. Don't, you know, whatever. I don't care if you're married to someone who served. Great.

Love you. Not here. Actually, I had to tell Hugh, no, my business partner because he wanted to join in my group. Unanimously voted. Did I love you? Just service members. Yeah. Actually, if you ask you about it, his way of telling it's way better because he remembers it.

I posted in the group, basically, should we allow business, you know, mill spouses in if their partner's not in the group? And it was like, you know, here's, I'm thinking my business partner, Hugh, he's done that, da, da, da, da. He's, you know, his wife was in the Navy, blah, blah, blah. And the answers I left on the poll were either yes or fuck him. And they were unanimously fuck them. And then one person commented, well, no, not necessarily fuck him, but no. And I was like, yeah, sorry, Hugh, you're out. The tribe has spoken. Yeah, yeah. So we, I mean, that's, I think what makes us unique is that we are all service members and vets. So every single person in the community has

that background. The only exception to that is actually only one person, my community manager who actually didn't serve. And really, she's just a great fit because she is, she's a real estate investor and she's great with people. And I'm like, I need someone to help me monitor everything going on in here. So she works in-house and she's awesome. And I think she is the only exception, like not even, like even my assistant was in the Air Force. So yeah. But I mean, so it's just a really tight community of people who have very similar goals. And there's a ton of educational content, a ton of guest speakers and a ton of all that value, but the real value is just the community and they best. What does it look like, though? Can you walk us through? Where is the community

located? Where does the collaboration happen? What's the frequency of speakers, whatever? What do I get? If I want to join, what do I get? I will walk you through it as if it's six weeks from now when the website launches. Because right now, we're using a platform that I don't like. I'm not going to name it for that reason. But it just, Facebook is impossible to beat on the engagement side. Like, you cannot trump, like, I spend 500 bucks a month of this community. It holds all my stuff. It's great. If I post a question there, I might get a response. If I post the same question in Facebook, I'll get like 40 responses within two hours. And I'm like, okay, well, this is, you know, you can't win. So I decided to own that and we dropped 8,500 bucks last month to launch a new

website. And so we're going to hold everything in-house. We're going to have full calendar, everything. So let's say if you join, what you get is three calls a week. One is a office hours. I can ask me anything, kind of like a group mentorship where and it might not even be me. It might just be you ask a question. I'm like, oh, cute, that guy right there is who you should ask. So it's just group knowledge, right? The tribe helping each other out. And then Monday nights is more like tactical presentations, right? You know, last night was Joe Moffitt talking about mindset stuff. We bring in, you know, I do a lot of random presentations there. on whatever topics the group wants.

Saturdays are either group speakers. And we do Saturday morning, either group speaker or like networking. We do breakout sessions. So I'll either one or two ways, either I dump people into groups of three to five randomly and give them a question as a prompt. And I'm like, here you go. And sometimes that's not easy questions because it just helps you get to know each other. It helps you open up.

Like I'll drop people into a group and be like, all right, your question is to tell that you have to tell the group one lie that you tell yourself about you. You know, I, you know, for me, when I first did that example, it was I'm lying to myself about how serious I am about losing weight. Because I really don't give a shit. I don't go to the gym. I don't eat, you know, whatever. Things like that. So it really pulls me a lot of the comfort zone, which you can do because they're all vets.

Or we'll split them into a niche. So it'll be like, you know, short-term rental, multifamily, raising capital, whatever. Hey, pick your group and go, you know, talk amongst people who are doing similar things. So Monday night, Thursday night, Saturday morning. And then we also split you into a squad. of between six to ten people, and that's like an accountability pod that meets once a week. And that's where the real magic happens as long as you're consistent. You're sharing goals.

Wait, how many was it? Sorry, I missed it. Six to ten. Yeah, six to ten people. I'm going to charge you a consulting fee for this podcast. No, I'm just trying to get you business. Everyone, this go to the war room. You know, actually, I do that when I like talk to someone.

I'm like, this is not meant for five pillars. I like send them to the war room. So I need an affiliate, actually. I can give you one. The table's overturn. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. Just I know.

I'll figure out how to set that up for a non-member because, you know, you were a service member and don't like us enough to join. Dude, I love you so much. I cannot be in another fucking group. I get it. Just don't. Just kill me now. We're not another group. We're the best group.

Okay. You're right. So really what makes, you know, you're getting three calls plus an accountability squad that you meet with once a week. And then, you know, we do two events a year. So like in February, we went to Keystone. I ran it out a 9800 square foot mansion. In October, we're going to San Diego, and I just paid the deposit on room for 50 people. And then we're doing a yacht that will hold 45.

So, you know, we'll probably invite like a few non-members and be like, hey, if you want to test it out, you can come. You don't get on the yacht. Sorry. Whatever. So, yeah, you know, it's just community focused. It's, I mean, the thing that makes the war room special and that I love about the war room is, you know, a lot of these groups are like an afterthought to a course or some, you know, whatever. It's like, oh, yeah, we'll also let people hang out in this Facebook group. Whereas for us, like the group, the community is the product.

Like you are getting educational stuff. There's masterclasses on every niche you can want. There's people in that group doing seven, eight figures in every niche you could want. But everybody's there for the community. You know, even guys who, you know, when friends of mine who were in the military are like, dude, I really want to help and give back. But I just, I don't have the bandwidth to start my own thing. I'm like, here, join let them in. I've let three different guys in for free that have a 20 plus.

plus million dollar net worth and I'm like just interact in the group and and you know and they all they all love it so we just try to build it to where it's just community focus it's good people right it is a place where you can ask a question and people who you would think you have no business talking to or going to for advice will go out of their way to help like bill out seven figure flipping is running a monthly call in there right now for free just he was the first one to jump on me saying hey I'd like to do some monthly coaching on stuff you guys are you know specialists in anyone want to volunteer and bill jumped and I'm like to He's an eight-figured dude, and he's crushing it.

He takes an hour out of his week every month to teach, you know, how to scale a business. And it's incredible. For real estate agents that do not have the following that you have, that want to start building or continue building their community with a Facebook group with really anything. What are some lessons learned that someone starting out can apply? I think depends on what your end goal is with it, but I would say as a young agent, you're probably looking at a niche into your market. So I would just say, do everything as just become the guy in your local market, whether that's a girl or whatever. You know, whether it's you're you're niching down into, you know, for me, it's Springfield, Missouri. So I, you know, run a local like Springfield, Missouri podcast where you interview local business owners.

I'm starting one like that next month. interview or run your Facebook group should be very SEO friendly as far as you know and it shouldn't be what you should what I would do if it was me and I was doing that is I wouldn't do realtor group or you know whatever it would be like Springfield Missouri real estate or Springfield Missouri homeowners or Springfield Missouri you know like moving to Springfield Missouri or something that catches the person you're looking for if you're looking for luxury like cool Springfield Mo luxury houses if you're you know whatever it is and I would focus it on just showcasing properties or showcasing whatever and and highlighting that area and

being very like SEO specific and then for those who don't know is being able to be found by people searching so like if Shelby's movie to Springfield Missouri what would Shelby ask Google should be like why the hell am I moving here or you know where should I live what neighborhoods are best what school districts are best whatever and I would target post on that so that anyone's searching online can find that stuff. I'd just write like a blog post and then I'd share that in the Facebook group. And I would just do a really good job of subtly cultivating that group and educating and helping and whatever while simultaneously anytime I see somebody who's another agent like pitching or

soliciting or DMing, I would just do no questions asked. So you would just own the group and you would just keep it even yourself as, you know, pitchless as possible. Like I wouldn't be in there slamming, you know, business. and people will just come to you. That's, that's, I feel like that's always the best way. Because as soon as, as soon as people start pitching or it, like, there are some groups where they only allow pitching of their own business.

It gets so, you know, it's so obvious when the only people that are responding, respond like respond in a way that's a, hey, come get me money. And anybody else that tries to help with just the whole point of the Facebook group is for other people to help and getting other opinions. You know, if that's shut down or the comments are deleted, you know, it's just, it turns into, people leave. It's not, it defeats the purpose of having a community. So two questions. I've probably blocked 5,000 or G's.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Good. As you should, because it's your group. You know, so what kind of rules do you have in place for your Facebook group? And you mentioned a community manager because that shit's a lot. Like, I feel like running a Facebook group, especially of your size is a full-time job. So what are the, what are the rules for your community and what does the community manager do?

Yeah. It totally could be a full-time job. So the community manager is war room specific. So she is, she handles onboarding, like the moment someone joins, she hops on the schedules an onboarding call. She's sending them that welcome, you know, we send them a copy of my book, my planner, my t-shirt. And then I'm trying to get a bulk order of four disciplines of execution because I think

that's a great, like, starting point book. And so we send them currently those two, but hopefully soon three books in a branded box that I'm saying all this again, remind, remember in six weeks time, because that branded box like 500 that I just ordered shouldn't should be here next week. So this will be real. And you know, so they get like a nice box with all that stuff. She does a welcome call. She walks them through onboarding. She follows up with them 60 days, 90 days. She's making introductions. She's monitoring and a group. And she's really just helping me facilitate like when someone joins the group, you want a quick win. Right. They pay money to be in a group. You don't want it to be like,

oh, thanks for joining. Thanks for the money. Figure it out. You want it to be like, oh, cool. You're in San Diego and you're interested in house hacking. Meet Donnie Appleberry, Adit Shah, Victor Querta, Doug Spence, and, you know, whoever else. Also, you're interested in this topic. You should talk to these three guys, even though they're not local. Oh, here's some resources. Here's, you know, whatever. Here's the course on house hacking with the VA loan that Dave is almost done editing and

will be done in that six week period. I keep on. I've put a lot of effort in lately because I were really ramping things up. So it's become my number one focus. I feel like you've been ramping up for every, time I talk to you, you're always ramping. You're always doing so much. The first time that I did the interview with you on from millionaire, from military to foreigner, it was like Hawaii your time. Had gone from military to millionaire, you would be able to say the words.

Shit. Are you poised? Is that what's going on here? That's that. I'm so far. But you were in Hawaii and it was like before PT, I think you were still in and I was like, dude, this guy is a fucking machine. He just works the whole time. So the fact that You're, like, ramping up now. I'm actually just going to ignore that for a second. I'm so curious about this. Answer about the Facebook group management.

Talk. Okay. We'll have a community manager, follow on question. Afterwards. I actually have 10 or 12 moderators now that are all, eight of them are from the v.A. like community. And so they're mortgage brokers that are incredibly knowledgeable about the VA loan. And they just kind of help monitor VA loan information.

They alternate. So one's on Monday, one's on Tuesday, once on Wednesday. And they're incredible. And then I have a couple friends that are just really, really, really trusted. You know, like Adam Whitney, Mindy Jensen's actually one of the moderators right now and a couple other cool people as well as my assistant. My assistant and I are the only two who approve or decline requests to join the group, mainly because I have a system called group track that allows me to throw them all into a database when they join. And if they drop their email, it'll automatically scrape it and throw it at my CRM. So it saves a lot of time.

Whereas if someone else starts accepting people, then I'm going to be. I'm like, well, they gave me their email and I will never have it now. So there's there's a lot of that. But I mean, as far as like the time that goes into it is really not as bad as you would think. It's just a matter of a little bit every day. You know, I probably accepting 20, 30, 40 requests a day to join the group. It doesn't take too long if you just scroll through and do it all at once. You do it once a day.

But if you don't do it over the week, it becomes a very big pain of the ass. So I think I feel like there was something else you asked there. but yeah well so is that like a paid partnership there too with a with the because you're vetting people it's it's your brand you know ultimately it's like you look at the rules your reputation is is that a paid partnership with the with the moderators you know the this lender is on Monday this lender is on Tuesday whatever it wasn't no it was them just wanting to help and add value but I am actually licensed as a lender now and I work within their team not vA specifically but one of the companies in their team as you know I make introduction. So essentially what happens now is when anyone,

whenever someone asks about loans or has questions, we actually have a portal set up just for questions. You're not applying for anything. You're just asking a lender directly that question instead of scuttle button in the group. But then we also have a portal for people who are looking for lenders. And so I push them to v.A has a map of the country and you can find different lenders there. If they pick one of the like few states that we are licensed in, the team that I'm partnered with, then I get a little bit out of it. But if not, you know, the other 20, 30 states. I don't get anything out of it, except for the knowledge that they're probably the smartest collective group of VA lenders in the country and they can do renovations and construction

and they're not, they don't have a ton of overlays. So they're not going to tell somebody no because they're brokers. And so, you know, it, it just fits kind of my branding there. As far as rules within the group, because you did ask, I mean, the basic, it just knows soliciting and be a decent human. If I can, if I get a sense that your intentions are to make money or pull someone to your platform out of the group, you're gone. It's just not the, it's just not the goal of the group, right? And if you're pitching anything, you're gone. If you want to talk about a property you have for sale, if it's your house, great. If you're an agent, goodbye, you know, it's, it's kind of just, I just basically go off my gut. If I feel like you're trying to help the group as a collective,

great. And if I feel like you're trying to help yourself in the group, then goodbye. And And, you know, you can, I just, as it scaled, I got to a point where I was like, the easiest way to do this is to block. And if they were genuine, they'll come find me and justify what they were doing. And if not, then I was right. So whatever. Okay. My question for this community manager, because this seems like such a impactful role where it's like someone has copped up the cash. They're joining.

And this is really like their first impression of the group is like hopping on a call with this community manager. And then also you're relying on her to be able to. make all the connections and understand, understand your business well enough to put all the pieces together. So who is this person? Where did you find them? How did you train them? Anything that you think might be applicable for someone who is leading a community

or thinking about leading community. Yeah. You know, ultimately it's funny because I said she's the one who's not a service member. I posted it in the war room first and was like, yo, I've got this job. Who wants it? And I didn't get any good bites. I had a couple bites,

but none of them were like, they were ify or, or there were two or three people who would have been perfect, but they have so much, you know, other stuff going on. And then I really like local. I like the ability. Last week, we sat down with the whiteboard and sticky notes. We wrote every step of the onboarding process on sticky notes, slapped it on the whiteboard, and reduced and rearranged and reduced and rearranged and spent two hours on the whiteboard, just redrafting everything.

And I can't do that if someone's virtual. I really do like the perks of like once a week. We all have a meeting in person. So after I couldn't find someone in the group itself, you know, I went through the normal hiring process. And I was basically looking for somebody with a very high eye, like, you know, people person, personality, similar to mine in that realm, but then a much higher, you know, SC, like the stabilized control organized side than me because I'm not. So I really just wanted someone who was like good with people, but also very organized.

And so Haley is that she's, you know, she's just a very friendly human. She's great with people. But she's also, she's very driven. Like her family owns lumber yards. stuff like that and she's been managing big lumber yards and stuff around town for a long time. And then she started doing real estate herself, oh, I don't know, six years ago. She does ground up development for duplexes and stuff. So she's building, you know, we sat down to interview and I'm like, so what do you know

about real estate? She's, oh, I'm building two duplexes right now. Oh, all right. Okay. You know a thing or two. Like ground up construction is not for the faint of heart. So, you know, cool. So she fits in a lot of ways like she's big time traveler, really friendly person, really good at all that.

Definitely still work in progress on mastering who to make introductions to and everything, which is why I originally went for, you know, we'll name it like Alex Fleece would have been perfect if he didn't have a whole lot of stuff going on because he knows everyone in the group. He's super. I was looking for that person who like is connected in the group, knows everybody, been around for like years and believes in the product and is like super hype. All of those people just happen to have a lot of really good things going for them and don't need a job. So she's she's part time actually because she's, you know, she does half the time.

She's developing real estate. The other half, she's sitting on calls with new members. But she just, you know, we went through a couple different interviews with people and it was like very personal, very friendly, very organized, had suggestions for how to streamline stuff. And then as far as like how we're basically building out in the new website, a black book that'll have like full contact info. But like when you update your member profile in the website, this is why I went with a website that I'm building so I can customize everything. It'll say, you know, like when you type in your address, it's just going to pull city and state. And then that'll all be like, anyone can search, hey, who's in San Diego, but nobody will know your actual address. You know, and you can choose to let your cell phone number be visible or not, you know, so it's got all that.

But then you break it down by niche. And so she'll be able to go on the site and just search and show someone like, hey, you want to find someone of your niche. Here's some that we recommend. And it'll pop up by what they're interested in and where they're located. And she can sort that way to help her, you know, help streamline stuff. And then I've given her a list of, you know, here's five or 10 people in each of these topics that are like my go-toes. You know, that's kind of it. And then we do, when someone joins, she takes their headshot and creates like a new member post.

Hey, new member intro. And it's like their highlight with like where they are, how long, you know, what their experiences is and what they're looking to get out of the group. And then we go in and just tag people like run away. It's like day one, you join. And I'm like, oh, you need to talk to this person, this person, this person. And, you know, the faster we can just facilitate those introductions. better. I have been on your Facebook group, like, looking

around. It is so impressive. You know, like, it's overwhelmingly impressive. The 60, almost 67,000 people in your Facebook group. You have guides after guides. You have the whole featured section. It's, I mean, I have a Facebook group, too, and it's myself.

I never want it. It's literally me. Because I was thinking of making one for about this is so, like, in the weeds. Spouses of military members who are real estate agents. So support other spouses that are agents because they're always moving. Sounds like a good niche.

Sounds like you talk yourself out of it, though. Well, I just don't have the, I need a community manager. So it doesn't take long when it's not big. It takes long as it grows. But by then you'll be able to support, it depends on your goal. Right. But if you, you can make it worth of time. You should, you know, next time you're in a car, you should go to my YouTube channel

and type in how to grow a Facebook group. And then you can watch like a 90 minute presentation. I gave my mastermind. I'm totally calling out on the phone ring in the background. It's all like, oh, nobody heard that. I'm on a hots spot right now. But I've got, yeah, it's like a 90-minute call on how to build a Facebook group suit into nuts that I did with my, within the war room.

And I was like, this is good content. I'll share it. Okay, Dave, you, you are, you always are doing so many things. and then you said you're ramping up before. Like you're on YouTube and you're on Instagram and you have the war room and you have podcasts and you're doing events and you're writing books. And I I'm on the recipient list of your email marketing. So you're doing email marketing.

Like I, but you said you're ramping up. Can you talk? What are you working on now? What are you excited about? What is your life? Please. First off, have you read the book 10x is easier than 2X? No, I haven't.

Oh, you should. It's great. It teaches you how to like outsource stuff. Prime example. I haven't written one of those emails in six months. It sounds like you. It's actually very impressive. I haven't even read them most of the time. Like most of the time I don't read it until someone's, oh, dude, I love when you said this. And I'm like, oh, that's a pretty funny line. I should go see what that email is. Okay, well, who is writing them? You're not using chat. That's a great. My friend Katie. She was a nurse in the Navy. Still technically in the reserves doing it.

And she started copywriting for a friend of mine. She was pretty good. And then she started copyrighting for another friend of mine. And she was good. And then I was like, hey, you speak Marine Corps better than you speak them. Come, come hang out. Let's see what you got. And then she started writing emails for me.

And she basically just takes content I make and then revamps. But she writes all my captions for social media and all my content emails. And she's amazing. She's also in the war room. I try to stick within there if I can, right? Dude, is she hiring? Fuck. I mean, like not hiring, but like taking on more clients.

I mean, I'll make an interest. She might be able to, yeah. She's done a few. I've made intros to a couple people for her. So I don't know. You know, she does. Well, I won't offer on the other people. You would know who she works with.

And she's good. You know, it was like a hobby that she started for a friend. And then she got better at it and then better at it. And then I was like, yo, you're pretty good at this. And so I've got that. I've got a trial run COO right now. We've got a 90 day thing going for, you know, he's working 10 hours a week to see how that works.

He's built another mastermind before. So my hope is that he'll be able to really streamline things for me. But essentially, like, you're right. I post a lot of content and stuff. But I sit down one day a week. I film content. I upload it. I have one call a week with my editor.

And we go through the content that he's edited. And then between my editor, the copywriter, and my assistant, it gets edited, captioned, dropped in Asana and scheduled through Metricule. to push to every platform. So I mean, my hands-on time with content is like ideas, filming. And filming is at this point, I've filmed 1,500, 2,000 videos. Like, it's easy. And so it's more just deciding what I'm going to talk about and then I just rock and roll.

So I've really tried to design my schedule this year to where it's like Monday is meetings, Tuesday is content. Wednesday is my podcast. Thursday is all things were in development and Friday's like you says. And so, you know, I barely touch my email until Friday. my assistant handles it all. Like I've just done as much as I possibly can to get me to focus on where I want, which is like content creation, ideas, you know, for the business, raising capital for deals

I'm invested in. And I mean, realistically, like, I spend a lot less time than it looks or than anyone thinks working on anything. Today I, if you look at my Instagram story today, it is a picture of me and my silky is in a lawn chair saying perks of being financially free. I'm sunbathing at noon. I literally just went and laid this. It was like, wow, it's nice.

I don't need to do anything for the next hour and just went and hung outside with my dogs. So it's, I'm not great at it yet, but it's a lot of outsourcing and hiring. And I mean, you know, it's a little lofty, right? Like I'm getting close 20 grand a month in payroll. So it gets to a point where you're like, okay, hope this works. But also, you know, my quality of life is so much better right now than it was four years ago. when I was burning the midnight oil and still growing, but not getting to work on only what I wanted to work on.

Where are, so I know you have many streams of income. Can you list what are your primary? And I don't know if you want to talk about numbers, but what, what are they bringing in? Because I know also you have courses. I don't really make any money on those. And that's why I was asking to because everyone's, oh, I'm going to make a course. Oh, I'm going to create a community. Oh, I'm going to.

And I'm like, okay, but really, what is that actually going to break? So can you, what are your thoughts on all of that? Talk about your streams of income. Yeah. If we wanted a really deep dive, I could pull up my net worth tracker. I do every month that we could get granular. But I think I can spitball pretty close. We'll go with rather than breaking it down by stream per se, we'll just say, you know, overall numbers, right?

So revenue wise, we're averaging 75 to 90K a month through 2024 so far. So January was 92. I think we hit 71 in February and we were somewhere in the mid 80s for March. Biggest revenue streams, the mastermind is one for sure. And then referrals, other real estate agents last year I averaged $10,000 to $12,000 a month in referral income, which is just making introductions right for anyone who doesn't know and I get 25% cut. I love that. That's one of my favorite ways to make money. It's a huge win-win because you only win if you introduce them to someone who actually knows what they're doing. And then everyone wins and the flyer doesn't actually pay anyone. But that's kind of, that's not as high this year.

It's probably five or six this year so far with, you know, rates and the market and all that other crazy stuff. Real estate, that's still up there, depending on what I'm doing. I bought, we should close on Friday on 14 single family houses. So still buying real estate. I bought a duplex two months ago. We closed on a 130 unit hotel and 10. to see in December looking at one in well we'll see what happens with it we've got another talk with the seller tomorrow currently looking at one in international which is pretty cool so you know

dabble in all in all that stuff but I would say primarily money comes in from you know the mastermind or brand the realtor introductions and real estate okay what I know that you have a course so looping back to our audience audience I hope that you are so interested in all these things but I know for sure they are interested in referrals and the fact that you brought in $10 to $12,000 a month last year on referral income, I know you have a huge personal brand, you have a huge podcast, you have this mastermind, all of that stuff. But could you talk about your like tracking process

or any tips, lessons learned that have made your referrals so successful? Yeah, well, I should probably mention that I spend less than an hour a month on my referral pipelines. So, you know, that's my, that's the real claim to fame, right? It's make that $10,000 to $12,000 a month, and almost all of it is automated at this point. It is, I mean, I built it all out really well in my CRM. So essentially what happens at this point is my email gets a notification that someone submitted the form. We then make an email introduction to the agent or lender that I have on a list for that area.

And then that agent gets a PANDA doc that is pre-templated. All you got to do is plug in emails and names. And it goes to them. They sign it, stays in Pandadoc, stays in the CRM. And then it just kind of automated through there. If we get a notification that someone's under contract, we move it to that section. And there's all these different, you know, emails and follow-up sequences and stuff built out. And then when they close, she probably does another 15, 20 minutes worth of word.

It's probably probably an hour all in for someone who closes. And for someone who doesn't is probably like five minutes, maybe 10. So pretty streamlined system through the. CRM and everything. There was something else you asked in there. Oh, courses. Yeah. So, I mean, the reason I don't make any money, you can absolutely crush it. Now, I'll say I think courses are dying. I think community is definitely the better move, which is why you see people pivoting that way. But I think it is if you're one of these people who's also, of course, also look at this Facebook group you have access to. Yeah, but if that's just a byproduct, nobody cares. So it's got to be like an actual community. I only sell my courses for 147 bucks. And I really just use them as a lead magnet. So half the time I give them away. for you know, I can't give it away for 34 cents on my birthday. I was like, ooh, birthday sale, one cent for every year. And then everybody was like, it says there's a 50 penny minimum or 50 cent minimum on the on charging on this this platform. And I was like, here it is for free then. Because ultimately it just gets people into the funnel and if they learn something from it,

great. That's an older course. I never pushed my courses. I never did. I never went hard on it. I mean, an email here, a pointer there, a mention here. Ironically, if I raised the price to 1500, they would sell more. Psychology is a bitch. It's funny. But really what I did was I built them. I made them really cheap. And then I offered them for free within my community. And so I tell people like, yo, for 147 bucks, you can get this course or you can just get it for free when you join something that's actually going to help you. So the one I'm building right now or creating right now, which like really deep dives all the reasons that the VA loan is great for house hacking and it goes into house hacking in general is never going to be offered outside the community. That's smart.

So, okay, with your personal referrals, where you're getting the 10 to 12 K month, who do you have in place to help manage the referrals and get the updates? My assistant's doing it. Okay. Is that what other, well, yeah, okay. Actually, yeah, I am going to ask that. What else is that assistant doing? So she's, so that assistant that you have, everything.

But different from what Katie does for. social media, right? So she doesn't do social media. Oh, okay. So Katie's captions and emails. Haley's the community. Amanda runs my wife, essentially. Like she runs my calendar. If you schedule something with her, she scheduled this, not me. You know, she, I mean, like we talked about it, obviously, but I just send the link to her. I'm like, book me, you know, or, or, or, hey, talk to my assistant, Amanda, military millionaire team. And then, you know, whatever. She gets, she decides what's worth it,

what's not. She books everything. She asks me questions if she has them, but she handles all my email. We just have a folder that says today and a folder that says this week. And I read the one today every day. I read the one this week on Friday. If it's not one of those folders, I assume she had it handled. I mean, she basically, her job is essentially to save me time and do random tasks that I either don't want to do or I'm not good at. She does a little bit of everything. Anytime I'm like, oh, hey, what about this thing?

Hey, Amanda, the battery on my Dakotty died. Can you see if there's a mobile mechanic to come. you know, replace this. I don't have to take it to a shop. Yes. Hey, Amanda, the DMV sucks. Go pick up my new license plates. You know, she, she saved me three hours last week, picking up my new license plates. So all kinds of stuff. Yeah, yeah, she's here. Except for today, because today is content day. And so I make noise and dance around and do stupid stuff on camera. And I'd rather not have somebody sitting there while I'm doing it. Hey, you're trying to work. Also, I'm yelling basically into your ear from 10 feet away at this camera. So, because that,

The main room out there is where the green screen is. So how did you find her? Indeed.com. I made a bunch of ridiculous hoops for people to jump through. And she was one of six that got a phone interview and then one of two that got an in-person interview out of 180 applicants. Is she full time? Yeah, she's full-time.

She's a Air Force vet. She's a stud. She was like airman of the year at a three-star command. So she's not a third. She stopped her. Man, okay, I would love to see, do you happen to have your job description for what you put on indeed,

that initial one, or any job description? Yeah. I would love a copy of that. Yeah, I need some to the hoops. The hoops to jump through. That would be really fun.

I'm literally imagining. Let me, let me make sure that I got this right. So basically it was the bottom, the very bottom, if you go all the way through the job description, at the bottom, not even at the bottom, actually, like probably 10, 15 lines up from the bottom. So if you just scroll all the way to the bottom, you wouldn't see it.

There was basically three steps. It was complete this Google form with a link. And, you know, it was just questions I actually cared about because indeed doesn't let me ask them. Send me your resume and your disc profile to this email address. And it had a link. And then it was, oh, it said, make sure the subject of your, the subject of your email said, badass executive assistant. And so basically what I went, what I went for with it was, if you missed any of those

steps, you're not detailed oriented. So I don't, I'm sorry, like, I need a detail oriented person. If you miss the, if you didn't read the thing, you don't want the job bad enough. If you're just skimming and mass producing, not my thing. The form asked questions that I, you know, like, why do you want this role? What are your long term goals? What makes you a good fit? You know, do you have military background?

If so, whatever. Like all the, it's only five questions. but enough for me to get a feel for the person. And then if they didn't do the disc or the resume or send it to me, then, you know, whatever. And then the badass executive assistant was like a culture test. Like people for whatever reason, and especially like a resume setting, aren't comfortable saying something like that. And so if they change the wording or omitted, you know, badass or whatever, I'm like, either you're not my fit culturally because you're not the type of person who would ever swear. And I'm sorry, that ain't us.

or you're like timid and not willing to do something like you're like that was just a meat like a shit test essentially look if you're going to work with me like I'm the guy who says the thing that you shouldn't say so you should probably be okay okay doing this I mean I had a video once go out on a job I was hiring for where I intentionally had a firearm behind me like up against the wall and was drinking scotch and was like if you don't want to work here fuck you and that was like the opening line and it was like, look, anyone who's not cool with this isn't going to waste my time by applying. And we had a very few applicants and they were all exactly what we were looking for. So I just tried to do stupid stuff like that. But the, the basically it was like, look, if I

don't get an email from you with resume with references with a disc profile with this subject and you filled out the form, I'm not talking to you. So I had 180, 190 people go on indeed, including a kid that I recruited who I actually like, but sorry. And then it was like, Oh, this person did everything about the form or this person did the form, everything else, but forgot the subject. The subject was the biggest one that we did people out of the ones who left indeed. So I probably had 35 people fill out a part of it and only nine that filled out everything correctly. And of those nine, six got a phone call and two got in person. I would love to know how much you pay her and if you want to share.

And what is the, how often do you guys meet to stay on track and then like kind of dive. deeper into the Today folder versus this week. Yeah. Pay. And then just one question. Manage. Managed. I'm going to remember all of this.

You remember. He remembers questions. So we can ask him like three questions at a time. It's in his brain. He's taking no sweating back there. The crayon of the table is getting short, guys. Okay. So I pay her five grand a month.

No benefits because she's probably none of my business. But let's just say that she served in the military and has plenty of benefits. So I'm able to, you know, reap the reward of not having to provide health care because she's good. So thank you, VA. So, you know, there's some benefits there. It's actually more than I wanted to pay. It was originally it was a $3,500 to $4,000 was the offer because the median income here is like $40. So, you know, but she's awesome.

And I would rather pay a little bit more and have awesome than not. So, and, you know, so for those listening who are like, oh, yeah, that's whatever. you got to remember where we live, right? Like where I live, 60K a year is more than my ex-wife, who's a master's degree, you know, 17-year experience high school counselor makes. So it's not bad. And yeah, so pay her that. She works full time.

She works here. Most of the time. I kind of go back and forth. Like she picks, I let her pick her kids up every day at one, you know, because I'm not an asshole. And she works from home and she actually does. I can tell that that's happening. So I don't care as long as she's actually getting what I need done done.

We meet every Monday at 9.30 for an hour as a team and we go through like a level 10. So we just run through all the things that, you know, like my upcoming travel or speakers or tasks or whatever. And then she and I kind of just touch base. I mean, she's literally right outside, right? Not right now. But normally like I open the door and there she is or, you know, the door's always open and we just bullshit. So, you know, she's pretty. We don't do a ton of meetings.

Probably should do a few more periodically or a little bit more structured. but it works. So, you know, whatever. But when I say that she does like everything, Missouri doesn't have an open container loss. Two weeks ago, me and Hugh went and day drunk at our property manager's office. We rolled in with a cooler full of coronas, set it down in the middle of their staff meeting and said, we're here and just kicked our feet up and hung out for four hours,

which is a terrible idea because I ended up buying a raw line of puppy. So I digress. Amanda drove my Tesla to their office while Hugh and I sat in the back seat drinking because there's no open container loss. So you can drink and ride in Missouri. And so literally I was like, hey, are you okay staying a little bit later tomorrow? Because we're going to go do this and you should D.D. And that was, yeah, so she got paid to drive around two drunk dudes in the backseat of a Tesla. And yeah, it's a good time. She's, I've never driven one of these. I was like, well, you'll have fun. It's going to be great. Like, she's a trooper. She's a fucking trooper. She's good people.

Okay, Dave, you mentioned hiring a brand coach. I think this is our last little sub topic before we pivot to wrap up. But so curious. Before we start the show, I'm like, oh, God. No, Amanda told us we had to stick for time. I'm just kidding. She did it, but she would.

She would yell at me more than you guys. Really? Okay, good. Okay, so you got a brand coach. What are your biggest takeaways from what he's telling you to do? Yeah, I kind of have two. I have one guy who actually did like the full rebrand of my website. website and brand and colors and scheme and logo and everything in October.

And he's like my design guy. But he's less of a coach and more of a. Paul, please help me. The other gentleman is like totally behind the scenes. No one knows who he is. No one knows he exists. And he likes it that way. Won't work with you unless he wants to.

Came by word of mouth recommendation from a friend. And then I found out after the fact that he's like behind everybody big. And he basically just yells at me about he's, he's from. Ireland or Scotland and he, you know, just sends me upset of these about things I should and shouldn't do. And it's amazing. He's got, I mean, the basic premise of what he's got me doing is he's, he's just really smart about, look, this video did better than that video because of this. So do more of that. Or hey, you should tweak this on your content or people want more of you and less of this. And they don't want. He's, he's, he's up front. Like I did a podcast, my first solo episode. I was like, all right, guys, my guest had to cancel the day. So, you know, I guess you get me like whatever. And he, we got on the next call and he was like, don't be like apologizing for doing solo episodes. You can go see. And I was like, okay, all right. He's own it.

This is your damn community. Go in the Facebook group and like this today's call, which is right before this, he was like, you know, he's go live in Facebook. I don't care if you pull like a crown and a, you know, cane and you just, I'm the lord of, he's do whatever the hell you want. Just grab a whiskey and go live or a cigar and go live in your Facebook group and just scroll through. the feed and just answer questions in the group live and let people ask questions and just hang out. And so to me, that's just seems like a no-brainer, but I'd never even thought about it. It's a pretty good way to build community to just hang out for an hour with the group and be like, hop on if you want to ask a question.

If you don't, I'm just going to answer people stuff live. Just random shit like that. He's been really beneficial as far as like my shorts content, like helping me out with what, what is, you know, understanding why things are working and why they're not and try to, you know, give me pointers on things to do. but it's less of a coach on brand, although he does tweak a lot of stuff and make suggestions. It's more of a coach on like topics, content, what people want to see more of. And his goal and goal is ultimately monetization, not just like vanity metrics.

That's nice that you have somebody to do the thinking for you, you know, like it, because you can, you're just being told what to do. Hey, Dave, like this, this topic didn't do that well. This topic is better. do more of that. God, what I would do for that. You know,

geez, that's, that's like amazing. So that way you're, oh, yeah. Is that way your brain can just open up space

to think about whatever the hell you want to think about or nothing? You know, just fucking relax. Damn. That's cool.

My goal is to get to where I show up, I record, and I leave. And that's it all the content from. Damn. Oh,

okay, so with people that do not have access to this person, this unknown, the one who shall not be named. What would be a good starting point to get somebody similar like that? He probably won't pay for him anyway.

He's not cheap. Yeah, I bet. Honestly, just go and put stuff out there. You know, so here's the like the content journey in a nutshell for anyone who wants to get started. Decide what your end goal is. Decide who your avatar is who you want to talk to. So if your end goal is raising capital for real estate, then and your avatar is a dentist, then go make content in a place where a dentist would find there you go and if it's if you're if you're

nick the new guy then you should make content documenting what you're doing and if you're actually doing something like on high level and you're like hormosi like or mozzi showed up on the content scene and he was educating because he had already done it but most people when they show up on the content scene should show up documenting what they're doing because they're not actually an expert yet there's nothing that pisses people off more than like somebody with a hundred followers being the expert on Instagram growth. And you're like, wow, you're so good at this. Where's your following?

So instead of trying to be something you're not, just replicate, you know, like my journey started out with documenting what I was learning. And then as time went on, it became much more focused on answering questions and being the authority, but it didn't start that way. And, you know, that was unintentional at the time. It was just more of an ego thing. Like I didn't feel I was ready for, you know, stepping into the line light and I wasn't. But it worked out for me.

So, I mean, I think ultimately, if you figure out, like, what the purpose, like, why you want to make content, who you want to reach, and then you just make content geared towards either questions that person's asking or something they find funny or it's relatable to them, you'll hit your mark. Okay, Dave, what? I know you're ramping up and you're doing a lot of things, but you're also, like, financially free. So what does the 10-year-ish look like? Are you one of those people who is, I'm never going to retire? or are you like, Allen, you want to sit on a hammock

and read a fiction book, you know, and her, what was your favorite? It was like a daffery or something? Yeah. What is the virgin pinocleta? Oh,

that's it. Fuck. Okay. Virgin. What? You want to taste better. She's weird. They taste better.

We call that a milkshake. Maybe that's why. It's dessert, not a drink. Yeah. So let's see. If I was, to go and try to lead Allie's dream life of chilling in a hammock, relaxing with no responsibilities,

I would probably just jump off a cliff. I definitely do not want to stop. And it's not that I don't want to stop because I'm like addicted to the game and I'm like, I got to have more money. It's just, I got to be doing something. You know, so if I am ever going to, it's going to be like, I bought my $400,000 Porsche GT3RS and I'm racing it on a track all day. That's, that's stopping for me. And that is a reward and a goal in the next year or two that is, you know, a plan. But it's definitely, I mean, I really like the mission. I like what I'm doing. I love what I do.

I love who I serve. I love helping people. And I, you know, you can make money a lot of ways. I personally like the way where the person I'm making money from makes money and thanks me rather than, you know, tenants who are like, I love real estate. But I've never had a tenant thank me for letting them pay rent. So, you know, I just, it's fulfilling. So at this point, I'm really just chasing things that are fulfilling, chasing hobbies again, traveling, living life, hanging out with friends. I don't know if I'll ever stop because I've.

really like what I do. I don't, I mean, it doesn't necessarily feel like work and the idea of not doing anything for a long period of time. Like, I love the idea of having a cabin, like shooter in the mountains and just chilling. But I couldn't do that long term. I'd go nuts. There's, I'm sorry. If I am ever going to stop like that, it's going to be on like 100 acres of a four wheeler, you know, my own little plane. Okay, we're going to go here now and jump with the plane. It's going to be a ridiculous stop, not because I got to keep moving. It's just, yeah, sorry. sorry to all those who's dream is chilling. That ain't me.

And there's no need for you to apologize. Boom. Yeah. You're taking a lesson out of your brand. Yeah. I had to think about it. I wasn't sure because I have a vulgar mouth, but there are some things, Allie, where I'm like, oh, I feel like I shouldn't say that because, you know, I just

want to, yeah. So anyway, I wasn't sure if that's, anyway, sorry. We are all so offended. Okay, what was that question? I wanted to head to the wrap-up. Okay. We have a couple of wrap-up questions for you, Dave. What is your favorite app or tool?

Like for a thing? For anything. Personal life, anything. Fun, business. I'm going to just save my calendar on Google, because I would lose my mind without it. That you don't even run. I love it.

Right. I was like, thanks Amanda. Okay. Dave, what? It allows me more, I should clarify, it allows me to tell people close to me. If you don't schedule it 24 hours in advance, it ain't happening. If you want to do a meeting, it's not outside of Monday. If you want to talk about this, it's not happening at this time.

If you want to do something work related after this time, sorry, I don't work after that time. And it allows me to very clearly tell friends like, no, if you want to get this done, you've got to plan it ahead of time. And you can't get in my world if you're not planning because otherwise I would never get anything done. I would be all over the place. So without that, I'd go nuts. Dude,

that is awesome. Thank you so much for coming out. Okay, so we, and otherwise, that is all we have for the show today. Dave, thanks for coming on.

And listeners, be a bro and share this show.